Friday 13 January 2017

Went out to lunch

This morning I knew I would meet an old friend for lunch in the city, but I didn't know exactly where, so I put a message on Facebook Messenger after I got to the computer with my coffee. Later a message came through telling me to meet my friend at his office, from where we would go out to lunch.

After the coffee I went back to bed and slept some more through the heat, then got up and walked into the city across the Pyrmont Bridge, turning left at the end to go into King Street via the Western Distributor walkway. I got to my friend's office on time and waited in the waiting room for about 15 minutes. Then I went to his office, signed some papers, and we left to go down to the street. On the way downtown we turned right into King Street to get ourselves across to a fresh pick: a Greek restaurant I hadn't been to before. We had originally decided to go to an izakaya near Event Cinema but changed our minds. I ate a huge meal of lamb shoulder and we had a bottle of Orange chardonnay to go with it. My friend had moussaka.

When the bill was paid we made our way out to the street and my friend told me he would show me a new tunnel from Wynyard to Barangaroo. You go through one of the old George Street entrances to the station then head right around past the escalators, following the white plastic cladding on the walls, heading north west. You come out at the root of Hickson Road, which you cross on a pedestrian bridge, then head down left on Darling Harbour past the ferry docks on the right and the restaurants on the left. You eventually get to Pyrmont Bridge. We stopped at a pub on the way and had a beer, then went on to my place, where we opened a bottle of white wine.

We talked through the afternoon, touching on dozens of subjects. It was one of those discursive conversations you can have with someone you have known for a long time. No subject is too trivial, from what a cab driver said about Uber to the nature of English socialism. I made some cheese on toast later on, and then some sardines on toast, just to top up the tank. Both of us had eaten so much at lunchtime that we didn't need to eat a full dinner today.

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